Rethinking those "bird scaring" owls

Oh, dear. I knew birds weren't fooled for long by those cheesy plastic fake owls people set out, but this is ridiculous! Check out this story from the Daily Mail: "Fake 'bird-scaring' owl becomes home for family of swallows."

Google ads

Since June, I've been trying an experiment, allowing Google ads to display on the blog. In over a month, I've earned a total of 71 cents. Meanwhile, the ads that have appeared here have included ones for products and services I don't endorse. Today was the last straw--there was an ad for a company promising to get rid of swallow nests. So I've dropped the project.

Being unemployed sucks. But I can live without that 71 cents.

Cliff Swallows

This morning my daughter Katie kept me company on a nice, long walk in Port Wing, Wisconsin. We heard a lot more birds than we saw, and most birds weren't singing at all--even at 5:45 am the temperature was in the 70s and most birds are beyond the singing season now. The only good photo-op I had was with a bunch of Cliff Swallows by the Port Wing Marina. They were pretty cooperative for digiscoping.




I posted a bunch more photos of them on my Cliff Swallow photo gallery.

Help! I need references

I've been invited to be a speaker, possibly, at a birding conference in the Southwest. But no one on the board who will be making the final decision has ever heard of me, so they need references from people who have heard me speak. Anyone who's heard me want to help? Email me.

THANKS SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED! THEY HAVE ENOUGH NOW. I REALLY APPRECIATE ALL THE HELP!

Hedwig

Please do not click on the following link if you have not read at least through page 57 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, since it contains a major spoiler. To protect those who haven't read that far, I'm writing my comments on a separate page: Hedwig and the Deathly Hallows.

Comments WILL be allowed to discuss this, so please don't read any comments associated with this post if you don't want to know about the spoiler.

Harry Potter Night!

Tonight is Archimedes and my last gig as Professor McGonagowl and my trusty "Scops Owl" Pigwidgeon. Archimedes doesn't particularly like this kind of cross-species acting job, but there was no way he'd pretend to be Percy's screech owl, so we had no choice. We'll be at Duluth's Depot for the Northern Lights Books Harry Potter Party till midnight. After that, don't expect to hear from me again till I've finished The Deathly Hallows. If you'd like to keep track of the owls as you read the books, check out my Owls of Harry Potter page!

Baby Merlins!

Last week after our big windstorm in Duluth, the ever wonderful Debbie Waters got a call about a couple of downed baby Merlins in my neighborhood, and since she was out of town, she called me and asked me to pick up the babies and bring them to a woodlot just across the street from the nest tree. I'd already picked up one baby the previous weekend--at that point I put it back on a low branch in the nest tree, but apparently it wasn't quite ready to grasp branches well, so Debbie had already come in and re-rescued that one.

When I got there on the 12th, one baby was still on the ground, so I picked it up and carried it across the street and found a branch it could hang onto pretty well. The mother squawked and circled over me the entire way, so she knew exactly where the baby was. Then I headed back to find the second one. I couldn't find it anywhere, though I searched the ground and in the low branches of shrubs in all the adjacent yards, too. But then I looked up and voila! That baby was probably still a bit clumsy, but it had apparently crossed over to the fledgling stage, and was now perched in the pine tree.

I added a bunch of photos of the little family to my Merlin Photo Gallery. My favorites:

Lady Bird

Here is a lovely tribute to a great woman, based on the respect Lady Bird Johnson earned from her Secret Service agents. I was particularly touched by this comment by Jim Hardin, who was assigned to her for 22 years:

As Johnson and her agents traveled the globe, she always visited museums, always chatted with strangers and always asked questions.

Johnson understood and appreciated that the agents shared her interest.

"We'd be in a museum, and when she was ready to leave she would turn to us and ask if we were ready or if we wanted to look a little longer," Hardin said.

Oh, my gosh! Stephen Colbert as a religious figure

Check THIS out!!! I only wish in the photo above they'd shown a bear in the background and a baby eagle on his hand.

Chickens need a compass?

Migratory chickens??!